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[kuki]

How do y'all keep your dwarves' time properly occupied, without undesirable consequences? Once I get a good fort of about 60 dwarves up and running, with all industries functioning and one or two specialized in, I find most of my dwarves are idle, most of the time. This is far from ideal, as they all make friends, and then go insane when their friends inevitably get their arms ripped off by giant dingoes.

The issue is that during important times, all those dwarves are needed. I might need to mass-produce clothes, at the same time as I hold off a siege with two or three squads of soldiers, at the same time as I plant one field of crops, at the same time as I harvest another and brew the yield into drinks quickly. Failing to multitask could result in dwarves being unhappy from nakedness, getting killed by goblins, or dying from thirst. Then all of a sudden the siege breaks, I have an abundance of clothes, and 1000+ drinks, and all those clothier/weaver/tradesdwarves and brewer/cook/farmerdwarves are dangerously idle, chatting each other up and bonding.

There are three solutions I have considered, and I don't like any of them, which is why I'm asking for help.

1) - constantly reassign idle dwarves. You were working in the kitchens and farms? Well it's not planting season and the pantry is full, so you're a miner now. Oops, we're out of wood and have no digging projects, you're a woodcutter now. The issue with this isn't just micromanagement, so much as that your dwarves don't have a stable class identity, and you wind up dramatically unbalancing the class composition of your fort as you reassign idlers around; then you find yourself wishing for a stable doctor, smith, etc blah blah that you could rely on without having to figure out who's available and assign a them a slew of labors every time you want a new job done.

2) - massive overlap in labors. Most dwarves have many labors enabled, so if there's any work at all to do, most of them will go do it, whatever it is. Problematically, this distributes experience around very widely, and must be tuned with regards to the game's individual prioritization of one labor over another - which I don't actually know the hierarchy of.

3) - make pointless shit. Dig random tunnels, churn out crafts and furniture. Downside: FPS death, fort clutter, stockpiles overflowing, trading takes forever with a million random junk items that you really need to get rid of for CPU performance reasons.

So what else is there? Thanks for any tips.

[martinuzz]

for every 25 idlers, I build another party room. Keeps them busy partying.

[kuki]

that was a joke rite? ha-ha

[FuzzyZergling]

Use larger meeting areas. If your dwarves aren't in close proximity while idling, they won't make friends.

[kuki]

I made a thread recently about optimizing idlers so that they don't get too friendly, and got lots of great suggestions. Unfortunately I find most of the methods unpredictable, and my dwarves usually still find a way to make friends if enough of them are idle for long enough, so I would like to know how others are keeping their dwarves busy : ) I guess I'm also interested from the perspective of getting the most out of my available dwarflabor, without inviting FPSdeath or a very disorganized fort inventory. When 20 dwarves are idle, it feels like a waste, even if they are not dooming themselves through socialization at that particular moment.

I guess I could try turning all the idlers into soldiers, until I need them again, and then return them to off-duty.

[martinuzz]

that was a joke rite? ha-ha

actually, nope. What good are my jails and catacombs, if my dwarves never throw a tantrum over losing a friend?

[Azated]

Idlers are only useful for three things.

1: Super fast hauling. Pretty self explanatory.

2: SlavesUnskilled mass labor. Castle walls don't have value modifiers, after all.

3: Meatshields. Yeah, I can't be bothered producing armor for all of my dwarves. If they survive their first engagement, they get a suit of steel and a spot in my official military squads, along with their own personal house built using the aforementioned labor dorfs.

[Kaos]

I start a fort by specializing my starter 7 dwarves, each dwarf has 1 labour and 1 labour only, when I get migrants I replace the dedicated whatever with the highest levelled dwarf.

I have 1 dedicated woodcutter and 1 dedicated carpenter, the woodcutter also hauls wood, this keeps the woodcutter and the carpenter  busy.

1 dedicated plant gatherer, gets enough above ground plants to keep a cook and a brewer busy

1 miner digs enough stone to get 1 mason busy making blocks and other stuff.

My plant gatherer usually grabs enough plants to get seed to plant and I use him as planter until I get a dedicated one, then I can leave the plant gatherer dedicated to pick seedless plants...

If I need mechanisms or architecture early I have my mason or brewer double as these until I get a dedicated migrant.

After a while I start adding extra dedicated dwarves to help with a particular industry, by the first dwarven caravan I usually have a legendary carpenter and cook producing enough stuff to buy out the caravan.

Also building walls doesn't give experience so my haulers double as wall builders and I use the experienced mason to produce stuff.

[AutomataKittay]

I don't bother to keep dwarves at 100% unemployment. I finds it's not worth the effort when there're burst jobs to do, like dumping stuffs, hauling things to trading depot and so on. I find it more worth it to maximumize efficiency of labors through specialization.

I always throw more dwarves into military if there're too much unemployment anyway, it's how things seems to work in reality too

[knutor]

Most of the Idlers, a dozen or two, tend to be the engravers and miners.  I try and keep my FPS up, by assigning them small jobs, one or two at a time, instead of a sweeping multizone smoothing and digging jobs.  When I see a spike in Idlers, my mind registers..   

Engravers and Miners are idle, AGAIN. 

The nobles and many of the liars, high linguistic and social aware dorfs, are always Idle.  I view Idle as just another job, for these fellas.  In a fortress of 120 dorfs, roughly 20 are Idle at any time.  The bad socializers become the all purpose haulers.  The high socializers, I don't even give jobs, unless I desperately need a miner. 

Not sure if this is working out for me, yet.  I'm having a difficult time playing, without DFHack, myself.  Specifically Removebadthoughts.  Too many bad thoughts as a result of barenekkidness.  There needs to be a decay penalty in the game's decay code for good quality clothing.  I don't think there is yet.  Quality clothing should not be falling to tatters so fast, atleast not the ones made in my fortress! 

I can understand the ones made by the elves and humans or x(items)x going bad.  But not the ones made in Knutorville!  Sorry to get off topic.  Sincerely, Knutor

[lordcooper]

More stone blocks.  Never enough stone blocks.

[katana]

More stone blocks.  Never enough stone blocks.

I ran out of stone from doing this on most of my forts. Then I need nest boxes, mechanisms... Funny day when gold is more common than stone.

[Blue_Dwarf]

I just found a way to keep them busy.

Assign some animals to a pasture. Build some chains, and assign those animals to the chains.

Dwarves start tying them to the chains, then untying and pasturing them in a loop.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Megaprojects.
Collect clay on repeat from a dozen smelters. Have the clay dumped down to the magma sea and shaped by several potters. Have the bricks carted to the surface and build stuff with them. Problem solved.

[Cool Guy]

I just found a way to keep them busy.

Assign some animals to a pasture. Build some chains, and assign those animals to the chains.

Dwarves start tying them to the chains, then untying and pasturing them in a loop.

I remember when I accidentally did this, it would wok most of the time but it gets in the way if their in the middle of hauling and I need them to go mine now. If your going to do this I only advise you to keep the restraints close to the pasture that way if you need them to do something they can finish their animal hauling job relatively fast and get to the important stuff.